Essay

Renée of France

Simonetta Carr
Friday, May 20th 2016
Mar/Apr 2011

A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. (Isa. 42:3)

Some biographies leave us with mixed emotions. The surge of inspiration we get when reading about the unswerving faith of Christian martyrs or the utter dedication of some preachers or missionaries is sometimes dampened by the feeling that we can’t measure up. That’s when stories of people like Renée of France comfort our hearts, reminding us that our faith, small or great, is always a gift of God, which he has promised to preserve until the end.

When John Calvin first met Renée in 1536, she was duchess of Ferrara, Italy, by virtue of her marriage to Duke Ercole d’Este. In her heart, however, as daughter of King Louis XII and Anne of Brittany, she was still primarily a French princess. In fact, had it not been for the French Salic law forbidding daughters to inherit the kingdom, she should have been on the throne of France, and she knew it well. Married to a man with very contrasting interests, intolerant of her habits and unimpressed with her plain looks, she had built a distinctively French Protestant court around herself where everyone spoke French, dressed according to the French fashion, and had access to Protestant books and preachers.

John Calvin was at that time one of the many Protestant refugees who had left France to escape persecution. Although he had just published the Institutes of the Christian Religion, he was still fairly unknown. To be safe, however, he used a pseudonym: Charles d’Eperville.

We don’t know why Calvin visited Ferrara. He had undoubtedly heard about Renée’s faith. Maybe he was hoping to find a fervent Protestant like Marguerite of Navarre, sister of King Louis, who could be instrumental in aiding French refugees and perhaps in influencing the king. What he found was a strong-willed and lonely woman, trying to live out her faith in a difficult situation, bound as she was by her husband’s attempts to appease the pope for political reasons.

Calvin’s short stay in Ferrara made a great impact on Renée’s court, and soon after his departure some openly rebelled against the Mass, with serious consequences. As for Renée, she developed a deep respect for the Reformer, trusting him (as her letters attest) to be her spiritual mentor—a role Calvin embraced wholeheartedly. He corresponded with her until his death, through every crisis of her life.

Dangerous Doctrines

Calvin’s motives for his correspondence with Renée are listed at the onset of his first recorded letter to her—his concern for her welfare, his duty as minister of the Word to make every effort to assist those in a position of power, and most of all the display of God’s grace he had seen in her during his visit, so much that he said, “I would feel accursed did I not take advantage of every opportunity to serve you.”

This pastoral letter addressed a problem someone in her court had brought to his attention: one of Renée’s preachers had persuaded her that attending the Mass was not wrong, but that it was in fact advisable, so as not to offend the weaker brethren. After reminding the duchess that the Mass was in fact an abominable act of idolatry and blasphemy, Calvin warned her, “If we attend it to please the ignorant, those who see us present conclude that we approve it and follow our example….If we wish to avoid offending others, we will have to ban Jesus Christ, because he is the rock of offense on which most people stumble.”

We don’t know how much Renée followed Calvin’s counsel. We know that she didn’t dismiss the preacher immediately and that she attended Mass at least on some occasions, such as during the visit of Pope Paul in 1544. The duke’s gift in 1540 to her of the villa in Consandolo, a small town about fifty miles south of Ferrara, allowed her greater freedom of worship. After 1550, when the death of some Italian Protestants in her region made it clear that it was impossible to sit on the fence, we have more examples of her open refusal to attend Mass, together with her daughters.

The Inquisition and the Fall

In 1553, the Church of Rome put increasing pressure on the duke. Renée’s religious tendencies were common knowledge, and the pope could no longer ignore them. In 1554, a Jesuit priest named Jean Pelletier was sent to Ferrara to investigate. After assessing the situation, he persuaded the duke to adopt rigid measures to bring his wife back into the Roman Catholic fold.

Knowing his wife’s partiality to France, and realizing her antipathy and disdain for Pelletier and his methods, Ercole asked King Henry II (who had succeeded Francis I) to send a French Catholic theologian. King Henry sent Matthieu Ory, Dominican prior in Paris.

At this point, Calvin was informed of the plan. Revealing his deep and alarmed distress over Renée’s predicament and expressing the urgency of the matter, he regretted his inability to visit her in person, entangled as he was with the administration of the church in Geneva. Despite the scarcity of ministers, he sent another preacher, François de Morel, to comfort and strengthen her during that difficult time.

In spite of de Morel’s efforts, Renée’s situation worsened quickly. In fact, de Morel was discovered, and the duke, now more irritated than ever, confined his wife to a room in his castle, sending their daughters to a convent in nearby Modena and dismissing all of Renée’s staff. Now alone, Renée was subjected to daily rigorous lectures and persuasions by the two clergymen in a fierce struggle for her soul.

She resisted for many days. Finally, she recanted, first with Ory—in her concern, maybe, to keep good ties with the king of France—and finally, pressured by threats of never seeing her daughters again, with Pelletier. We don’t know the sincerity of her recantation. On the one hand, she wrote words of perfect submission to France and to her husband. On the other hand, Ercole never really believed her and kept her under careful surveillance until his death.

As news of her abjuration reached Calvin, he commented regretfully to his friend William Farel, “What can I say but that an example of constancy is a rare thing among princes?” Writing to Renée, however, he admonished her in love, talking about her denial of the faith as a rumor not yet verified. “Our good God is always ready to receive us in His grace,” he wrote, “and, when we fall, he holds out his hand that our falls may not be fatal….If, through your weakness, the enemy has gotten the better hand over you, may he not have the final victory, but may he know that those whom God has lifted are doubly strengthened against any struggle.”

Slow Recovery

After her recantation, Renée apparently managed to live relatively undisturbed in her villa in Consandolo. We can deduce this from some hints in Calvin’s letters: “It is an evil sign when those who have waged with you so relentless a war to turn you aside from God’s service now leave you in peace.” In another letter, he described her as asleep in a condition of spiritual enslavement.

Yet her letters reveal a strong yearning and pining for God’s service, which Calvin recognized as a good sign. He sent at least one minister to help her, even if for a short time, and continued to exhort her to seek instruction: “We don’t need to urge you—you know well how much you need it.”

In 1559 on his deathbed, Ercole asked Renée to promise again that she would live as a Catholic and stop corresponding with Calvin. He had included her in his will on condition that she lived “the Catholic way, as true Christian.” Moved by the pleas of her dying husband, Renée caved in again and promised. Later, Calvin reassured her that, being a mistake with which she had offended God, her promise was not binding.

Moving to France

Now free from her marriage obligations, Renée asked Calvin’s advice on her plans to return to France. Calvin didn’t hide his hesitations. France had changed much since 1528, and political and religious wars were raging. Besides, he was not sure if Renée had become stronger in faith. If not, he felt compelled to warn her that the move could very well take her from the frying pan into the fire. He concluded on a positive note, exhorting her to remember that her “inheritance and eternal rest are not down here,” as both God’s Word and her experience had taught her.

In spite of his warnings, Renée arrived in Orleans, France, on November 7, 1560. She soon realized Calvin was right. The political situation in France was complex, and she found herself in a difficult situation, especially since her firstborn daughter, Anne, was the wife of Francis, duke of Guise, one of the main protagonists in the religious war.

She moved to her castle in Montargis, hoping to distance herself from political struggles, but the war followed her there with a barrage of new challenges. The senseless violence of both parties shocked her to the point that she decided to make her castle a refuge for all wounded, regardless of their religion. She was also appalled by the Huguenots’ requests that she allow the plundering of the shops owned by Roman Catholics in Montargis, and she was deeply offended by remarks condemning her Catholic son-in-law to hell. Besides, there was some friction between her and her minister and church-planter, de Morel, mostly pertaining to his role in the administration of her staff and his denial of her request to attend the synod meetings held in her castle. She sent her complaints to Calvin, who had been in correspondence with her all this time.

Once again, Calvin wrote a long and detailed answer, warning her against the power of personal affections and highlighting the difference between eagerness to take revenge against those who have offended us directly and a zeal to preserve God’s church against its enemies. At the same time, he praised her refusal to acquiesce to the unjust requests of the Huguenots and agreed that no one should declare another person damned. Regarding the synod, he didn’t forbid her to attend but admonished her not to interfere with its decisions. Mostly, he helped her understand the importance of submitting to the government of the church: “Madame, to have a duly Reformed church, it is more than necessary to appoint someone to watch over the life of each person. And, so that no one may feel aggrieved at having to give account of his actions to the elders, let them be chosen by the congregation.”

Calvin’s careful preoccupation with the affairs of the Reformed church in France, and his thorough investigation of each matter as it was referred to him, is amazing if we remember his concurrent involvement with the restructuring of the church in Geneva and the development of pressing theological doctrines. Renée still felt, however, that there were many serious problems of which he was not aware: “I beg you, Monsieur Calvin, to ask God to show you the truth of all these things, since I pray that, through you, God will expose the hidden works of malice prevailing in this world and in this age.”

She didn’t know Calvin was critically ill at that time. His reply was short. After an uncharacteristic explanation of his terrible ailments, he addressed her problems briefly. He exhorted her not to be too vexed by things around her, praised her for a life spent in the faith, and encouraged her to press on.

Less than eight weeks later, on May 27, 1564, Calvin died, and Theodore Beza, his successor in Geneva, continued the correspondence with Renée. The duchess lived for ten more years, still supporting the diffusion of the Protestant faith without intervening in the political arena. Slowly, the community of Protestant refugees in Montargis became large enough to grant the building of a Protestant college.

Before her death on June 15, 1575, Renée prefaced her will with a statement written in the third person, confessing her grievous disobedience “in spite of having been instructed in God’s pure word and truth, a blessing which has no equal in this world,” giving God all the glory for the preservation of her faith. She ended the preamble with a resolution to confess God’s truth “with heart and lips until her last breath, so that, in life and in death, she may live and die for the Lord God.”

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Simonetta Carr
Simonetta Carr is the author of numerous books, including Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia through a Mother’s Eyes, and the series Christian Biographies for Young Readers (Reformation Heritage Books).
Friday, May 20th 2016

“Modern Reformation has championed confessional Reformation theology in an anti-confessional and anti-theological age.”

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